10/03/2007

An Entire American City Thrown Back 200 Years

An innocent-looking freighter sails 200 miles off the East Coast of the United States. In international waters, it appears to be no threat. However, its true intentions soon become evident. During the ship's transit over thousands of miles from a port in a country unfriendly to the United States, a SCUD missile remained concealed but is now being prepared for launch from the freighter's deck.

The warhead of the soon-to-be fired SCUD — a relatively inexpensive missile abundant around the world — is not designed to detonate on American soil or to inflict massive civilian casualties via a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon. This warhead's targeted impact is purely economic, for it is armed with an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) payload — tailor-made to inflict as much such damage as possible. And, as a recent study concludes, detonation over the Baltimore-Washington-Richmond corridor could result in economic output losses (exclusive of infrastructure replacement costs) "exceeding $770 billion or 7 percent of the nation's annual gross domestic product." ...

An article by Tom Harris describes its potential destructive impact: "An electromagnetic bomb, or e-bomb, is a weapon designed to take advantage of this [electrical power] dependency. But instead of simply cutting off power in an area, an e-bomb would actually destroy most machines that use electricity. Generators would be useless, cars wouldn't run, and there would be no chance of making a phone call. In a matter of seconds, a big enough e-bomb could thrust an entire city back 200 years or cripple a military unit."

Thus, while moviegoers may perceive EMP either to be fantasy or a threat of only temporary disruptive consequence, such an attack — with long-term, devastating impact — is a very real possibility. And, terrorist groups today are fully capable of delivering such an attack. In fact, the SCUD-launching freighter scenario above is one Iran has been practicing for months in the Caspian Sea.